The Poetry of Toast

Though we eat little flesh and drink no wine,
Yet let's be merry; we'll have tea and toast;
Custards for supper, and an endless host
Of syllabubs and jellies and mincepies,
And other such ladylike luxuries.

- Percy Bysshe Shelley

____________

Taking an everyday ritual and transforming it into an artistic process, The Poetry of Toast, was where the literary, olfactory and nostalgic powers of toast were explored... and devoured.

Attendees were knighted with a Victorian toasting fork amulet before being lead to the toast library, where the quotes ranged from Wind in the Willows to Margaret Atwood. Their nostalgia successfully stimulated, they carried on to the toasting station, following the familiar steps before eventually using cinnamon (or chocolate) and a laser-cut stencil to print poetry on their hot buttered toast.

All the while the smell of toast drifted round the gallery, greeting visitors with its homely aroma and making the alien space of the gallery evermore inviting... 

____________

The Poetry of Toast | Part of the DesignMarketo residency at Doug Aitken's Station to Station | Barbican Art Gallery, Silk St, London EC2Y 8DS | 19 July 2015.